About
Allow me to introduce myself
Hi, I’m Crissy — founder of Riverside Retreat — and this is my fiancé Kimi from Kosovo. He speaks Albanian while I speak English, and somehow life still found a way to bring our worlds together. We share our home with our adorable cat, Olive, and together we are building a life centered around peace, connection, healing, creativity, and intentional living.
For more than 20 years, I have been deeply passionate about self-discovery, personal growth, creativity, mindfulness, and finding peace within myself. After years of entrepreneurship, constant responsibility, and eventually experiencing burnout, I realized something important: true clarity often comes when we finally allow ourselves to rest.
What began as a personal healing journey eventually became the vision for Riverside Retreat — a peaceful women’s retreat experience designed to help guests slow down, reconnect with themselves, and rediscover clarity in a world that rarely stops moving.
After taking a solo restorative getaway to reset from the pressures of work and everyday life, I experienced a major shift in perspective. In the stillness, I found myself reconnecting with the parts of my identity, passions, and creativity that had been buried beneath stress and constant productivity. That experience inspired me to create a space where other women could experience the same kind of transformation, emotional reset, inspiration, and self-reflection.
Soon after, I found the riverside property that would become Riverside Retreat. From the peaceful natural surroundings to the hidden river lookout I discovered after closing, the property immediately felt aligned with the vision I had imagined — a calming sanctuary filled with the small luxuries and restorative experiences that make people feel truly cared for.
Although I wasn’t raised in a particularly religious household, I always felt there was something greater connecting all of us. Over the years, I became deeply fascinated by the relationship between science, consciousness, spirituality, human emotion, and the mysteries of the universe itself. I explored everything from psychology and mindfulness to physics, energy, string theory, creativity, intuition, and the deeper questions of why we are here.
What I discovered is that while knowledge and research can teach us many things, some of life’s most important answers are felt rather than logically explained.
Throughout my life, intuition has been one of my strongest guides. The moments where I felt most aligned, most peaceful, and most connected to myself were often the moments where I trusted what deeply resonated within me instead of ignoring it. Those experiences shaped not only my personal journey, but also the vision behind Riverside Retreat.
I believe that when we slow down, reconnect with ourselves, and begin making decisions rooted in honesty, self-awareness, love, and alignment, life often starts opening doors we may not have noticed before. Even difficult seasons can become meaningful parts of our growth and transformation.